Forsaken
by DarkFey
Summary: Having lost his life to blood- and lyrium-laced dreams of what once was and what could have been, Fenris must relearn the powerful lessons and truths about pain, forgiveness, and what it means to love anew. Set immediately after the end of the game.
1. Grief

_It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. ~Colette_

He forces himself onward as though he were a horse and not an elf, dirty and disheveled like a madman.

He runs as though mercenaries bearing the marks of the Tevinter Imperium are on his heels.

He weeps silently as though he has lost everything he has known and loved.

And in a sense, he has. He misses the quirks of Kirkwall. His companions' good-willed banter strikes blows to him every time he closes his eyes. He misses the feeling of knowing that the next danger he would face would be at the side of the Champion, the surety that he would solve any and all problems with a sword.

He misses Garrett Hawke.

If his heart hollows at the absence of the relative coziness he had enjoyed in his demolished scrap of a mansion, then it shatters into a thousand crystalline shards of jagged, raw pain at the absence of Hawke. Despite his persistence in letting his bestial instincts govern the empty vessel that he has become, his last memories of Hawke come to mind, uncaring of the anguish burdening themselves.

The Gallows. Templars, and mages. The realization that they were on the wrong side of battle, fighting for—in spite of every speck of hate he had voiced towards them—the magi. The blood, the battle fury. Orsino and Meredith, dead. A sense of victory kindling ashes of weariness.

The sudden awareness that Hawke does not take his usual lead of the group, lingering towards the back. The dawning horror. His knees buckling. Running to his side. Seeing the wound Hawke had attempted to cover. Hawke is silent. He is screaming.

There had been a spark in his eye, the kind of look that Hawke had when he was about to say something amazing, something life-changing. But then the mote of light faded, his hand going limp in his grip. A look of peace replaces the quiet suffering on Hawke's face. The only words of love and wisdom that passes through his lips is that of a bloody sigh.

He screams, over, and over, and over. As though by keeping that one bit alive, he would still be alive when he opens his eyes.

_Hawke. Hawke. Hawke. _

And when that doesn't work, he switches to Garrett. He even tries Champion. He tries all the endearments he can think of, in every language he knows, and then some. He tries "beloved".

It is the last word he has spoken in a long, long time.


	2. Frigid Dark

_Falling in the black  
><em>_Slipping through the cracks  
>Falling to the depths<em>

_Can I ever go back?  
>Dreaming of the way it used to be<em>

_Can you hear me?_

_~Skillet_

It's cold. The frost curling about the blackened leaves that drift feather-soft from the canopy tells him that. His breath sears his raw throat and floats in front of him, evidence that he can't deny. It's cold.

It's cold, but he doesn't feel it. He doesn't feel anything anymore. He's lost the capacity to _remember._ He's supposed to remember, but he's can't find the willpower to speculate why. He's locked his memories of the pain and suffering he knows they contain somewhere far, far away, where no one will ever be subjected to their horrors again.

He's much colder on the inside, anyways. The weather around him is a warm, albeit ineffective, balm compared to the ice gripping his soul in diamond-hard tendrils. He's come to appreciate the coldness, the way its bitter embrace numbs both body and mind. He surrenders himself to it, willing it to take him. He presses his cheek to the earth, savoring the bite of rock and the chill of primal misery. He stays there, for a long, long time. So long that he loses grasp of what time is, what _he_ is. He laughs for the sheer joy of it.

It hurts his throat. He hurts everywhere, inside and out. He wonders why. He's uncomfortable. He's thirsty. He's hungry. He thought he was beyond pain, and it scares him. If his body starts to hurt, then it means his memories are just a sliver away from sinking their searing fangs into him. So he stays there. Huddled under the boughs of his mother tree, he waits for the ultimate wintriness of death to take him. He does more than wait. He _wants_ it to take him. It's simple, really, the answer. He wonders why he didn't think of it earlier.

His limbs are stiff from lying so in his curiously metallic armor. Cautiously, lest he provoke his memories to bite, he eases out of it. He's drained by the time he slips from the last piece, his body weak and sickly. He eyes the black plate, nausea warping his vision. It takes him awhile, the stars whirling overhead above the canopy of evergreens and dead tree branches, but he finally spots the hilt of his dagger. He reaches for it, slowly, carefully. His wasted body protests, fire flaring through his stick-thin arms. Careful. He must be careful.

He isn't careful enough. The memory slams unbidden into him. It surprises him, and he slices his palm on the blade. His spilt blood sparks the image into a thrice brighter, more agonizing memory of him. Garrett. Cursed. Hawke. He had presented him the dagger for their tenth-year anniversary since having met each other.

He cries out, stirring a nearby flock of birds. It isn't the tearing pain in his hand that causes the scream, but the memories. It's always the memories. Always. He shuts it out, quicker than damns everything he can think of in the language of the Tevinter, the words rasping from his throat in a deadly stream of loathing and anguish. It lasts for awhile. He's even more exhausted when it ends.

When he thinks to look back, his weapons and armor are gone. He stares. They don't miraculously appear. He continues staring. There is an odd crumbling of dirt below him, as though ancient roots stirred to torment him for sheer amusement. He doesn't understand. He reminds himself that he doesn't have to understand.

Delirium takes him one more. He is always wondering, despite the futility of it. Grief- or fever-inspired, it doesn't matter what inspires the madness. Nothing matters. The memories are rebellious. They always are, but today is different. They strike out at their cage, eager to escape, eager to tear the scarred scabbing of his wounds once more.

He is forced to remind himself, _them_, that he doesn't care again.


	3. Gone

"_But he who dies in despair has lived his whole life in vain."_

_~Theodor Adorno_

Not long, now. The stars whirl above him, darkness his one true companion. Never has it abandoned him, even as he goes beyond the comfort of mortal hunger and thirst. He closes his eyes, blackness pooling behind his eyelids, and the slightest uplifting of his lips indicates a smile. Soon, he'll be gone. Gone to the ultimate mystery, the place beyond death.

He hopes that he'll meet Hawke there, and that if he does it will have been a precious gift beyond his wildest dreams. But he doesn't expect to; he knows that he's not worthy enough to go wherever Hawke has gone. Hawke was a hero, a martyr to the people of Kirkwall. He's but Hawke's elven companion, insignificant, unmentioned, and unloved.

That isn't true; Hawke loved him. But he has no one now. The others, Varric, Aveline, Isabella, they're all gone. Ghosted away into legend and vanishing in the corporeal world. It hurts, all over, to think of them, but he doesn't mind as much as he did before. Pain is nothing new. He's beyond it.

They tried to comfort him in the scant seconds he had allowed them before they had scattered, taking their own paths to deal with their grief. He had spurned them, even lashed out, but here in his quiet vigil as he wisped into death, he appreciated it. Happy memories, happy times. Hawke. They spin around him, his mourners at his funeral. He's warm, comfortable. Blissful.

He sleeps.

The roots shift under him, seeking, pulling. He's heard stories of the fey things forests can do, and he's happy. The forest's going to absorb him, and it comforts him to perhaps think that his soul will nurture a tree or flower. He's pulled under, where his friend Darkness awaits. He smiles his weak smile, a smile that no one will ever see or acknowledge.

Cool fingers. Chill and pale, snow and fire. Black tendrils, drifting across white gauze, silver silk. The personification of the forest peers at him with the greenest eyes he's ever seen, and he's touched at the concern in them. He appreciates the forest cares for him, enough to channel its powers into an illusion of comfort, but wishes that it would leave him alone, now. He's ready to let go.

More drift into existence, their approach silent. Beautiful, specters of the forest, but lacking the luster of the being before him. The chill fingers turn probing, and he lets out a small breath, a gasp, all the energy he can spare. It hurts, and he retreats further into the darkness.

Elven words, a soft tongue. Musical. He closes his eyes, unable to understand, but hearing nevertheless.

_Harel Fen! _Loud, ringing. Too loud. It hurts his ears. Then, closer, softer, as if in confidence,

_Na shiral suledin uth vir reth. Halam mahvir._

He ignores it. He wants his end, impatient now. He's lifted as darkness sucks him further downward at the same time, and the sensation is disorienting, overwhelming. He releases his hold on the world, cutting his bonds to the existence that had brang him so much pain.

He's free.


End file.
